10Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala

Transcription

MAKERERE
UNIVERSITY
MISR WORKING PAPER
Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala
Mahmood Mamdani
Professor / Director
Makerere Institute of Social Research
MISR Working Paper No.10
August 2012
Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR)
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
www.misr.mak.ac.ug
Working Paper No. 10
Mahmood Mamdani
Professor / Director
Makerere Institute of Social Research
Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala1
Why would a reading of The Muqaddimah2 by teachers and students in the Ph D program at
Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) be of interest to a wider audience? One could
put this question differently: why would a reading of a 14th century North African text be of
interest to academics in 21st century Kampala? Both questions belong to a wider reflection
on the subject of universalization and particularization as aspects of a single process.
The universalization of particular modes of thought goes alongside the particularization
of other modes of thought. The centuries between the conquest of the Americas and the
decolonization movement signified by Bandung witnessed two related movements in the
history of thought. On the one hand, Eurocentric thought was elevated to a universal; on
the other, non-European modes of thought were containerized as so many “traditions” of no
more than local significance.3 An assessment of the intellectual legacy of this period calls
for a double task: alongside a critique of Eurocentrism, an exploration of engagements across
various non-European modes of thought bounded as so many discrete “traditions.” This
paper hopes to explore the difficulties involved in such an engagement in the period after
Bandung.
Let me rephrase the question in line with the dominant African imagination: Why study a
late 14th century text today, in sub-Saharan Africa? I can think of at least three reasons why
a study of The Muqaddimah in an African academy is important today. Most importantly,
it provides us with a resource to think of an alternative to Eurocentrism. If Eurocentrism
claims to give us a universal history of reason anchored in Greece, the Muqaddimah offers
both a discourse on the human and human reason and calls on us to think of the relation
between Greeks and Persians as a way of de-centering Greece-focused Eurocentrism. At
the same time, it raises critical questions about Afrocentrism which has come to identify
Africa with sub-Saharan Africa, as the product of a singular experience, slavery, but with
a historical archive in Pharaohnic Egypt, not very different from how 19th century Europe
fashioned classical Greece into an archive for European civilization.4 How do we historicize
Africa before the Atlantic slave trade? As a continent or as different regions? Both Ibn
Khaldun and The Muqaddimah suggest that it may be productive to think of Africa before
the period of Atlantic slavery in regional rather than continental terms, and that one such
1
2
3
4
This paper was written for the workshop After Bandung: Non-Western Modernities and the International Order,
held at Makerere Institute of Social Research, Kampala, May 10-11, 2012
Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, An Introduction to History, tr and intro by Franz Rosenthal, Abridged and edited by
N. J. Dawood, with a new intro by Bruce B. Lawrence, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1967
The distinction between “modern” and “progressive” Western thought and “customary” and “stationery” modes of
non-Western thought was fully articulated in the writings of Sir Henry Maine, the British legal theorist who was a
member of the Viceroy’s law council after the 1857 Uprising. See, Henry Maine, Ancient Society.
Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece
1785-1985, Volume 1), Rutgers University Press, 1991.
1
regional imagination would bring together the Mediterranean and West Africa in a single
history.
Second, The Muqaddimah has the potential of broadening our understanding of how to use
oral tradition as a resource in the writing of African and regional histories. The use of oral
tradition as a source for historical information has been central to debates on the production
of a history of Africa. But these debates have remained confined to the history of stateless
societies in Africa. Ibn Khaldun’s discussion of isnad (the chain of transmission) has the
potential of connecting it with a scholarship that has been totally set apart until now.
Finally, The Muqaddimah is a vital resource for thinking about difference in today’s Africa. To be sure, this is a very lifelike resource, with contradictory effects. To begin with, The
Muqaddimah helps us think beyond conventional post-Enlightenment binaries, in particular
religion and reason. Ibn Khaldun’s discussion of group feeling (assabiyah) in the reproduction
of society and the construction of the state invites a reflection on the pre-modern (religion
/ ethnicity) and the modern (nation). At the same time, The Muqaddimah takes for granted
another binary, that of the savage and civilization.
I begin with a brief reflection on MISR, the site of this exploration, before proceeding to the
main subject matter of the paper.
The Site of Reflection: MISR
MISR was establishedas one of three colonial think tanks in British Africa alongside the
Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Rhodesia and the West African Institute of Social Research
in Nigeria, in the period after the Second World War. The object was to make sense of
nationalism. Led by a string of prominent social anthropologists – MISR’s first director
was Audrey Richards – its mandate was to understand the riddle at the heart of post-war
nationalism: the “urbanized native.” This group of academics produced trend-setting work.
At the same time, they assumed that their successors – like themselves – would be trained
outside the country. Even though the leadership of the Institute changed hands (or brains)
from British to Ugandan academics in the period after independence, this assumption did
not change. The second period in MISR’s existence was defined by a protracted political
crisis in the relations between the state and the university over the seventies and eighties. It
translated into a fiscal crisis and led to the gradual erosion of a research-oriented academic
culture. The fiscal crisis provided the entry point for a World Bank-guided ‘reform’ which
ushered in the third period stretching from 1990 to 2010. The Bank pushed for a series of
market-oriented reforms. At MISR, this led to the development of a consultancy culture.
I spent a year in 2007 studying the devastating impact of World Bank-initiated ‘market-based
reforms’ on the academic life of Makerere University.5As executive director of Makerere
5
2
See, Mahmood Mamdani, Scholars in the Market Place, Kampala: Fountain Press, 2008.
Institute of Social Research from May, 2010, I witnessed first hand the damage suffered
by the country’s premier research institute. Sobered by this realization, a small group of
us – a number of colleagues in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences – spent
the better part of a year brainstorming how to turn MISR around from a consultancy unit
to a research institute. We agreed that nothing less than the development of a process of
endogenous knowledge creation, including a full-time, coursework-based, inter-disciplinary
Ph D program, would do.
No sooner had we started the program than we were confronted by another challenge: the
need to develop a curriculum appropriate to our time and our place. The curriculum at
the university was not only strongly present-oriented but was also driven by the language
of “crisis” and “transitions,” preoccupied with issues ranging from “development” and
“conflict resolution” to “HIV/AIDS” and “identity politics.” It seldom probed beyond the
contemporary and, when it did, the tendency was to limit the perspective to the colonial
period. How do we reshape this curriculum to make possible a radically historical and
humanist inquiry of “Africa” and “African” without dislocating it from the world at large?
Though we started with this ambition, the tendency was to borrow the curriculum from
the Western academy – wherever each of us had just taught or graduated from – as a
turnkey project. So students in the MISR doctoral program were supposed to take two
courses in theory, Western Political Thought, Plato to Marx in their first year and another
titled Contemporary Western Political Thought in their second year. At the same time, The
Muqaddimah was to be read in a third course titled Major Debates in the Study of Africa. It
is the students who began to ask whether we could redesign the theory courses so they are
less West-centric and more a response to the needs of this time and this place.
It is in this context that we began reading The Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun, first in a study
group in 2011 and then in a PhD seminar in 2012.
Locating Ibn Khaldun in a tradition
Ibn Khaldun was a graduate of Al Karaouine (859) based in Fez, Morocco, considered by
UNESCO as the oldest ongoing ‘university’ in the world. I put the word in quotes for
one reason: the Latin word universitas means ‘corporation,’ because they started as “small
corporations of students and teachers” who got “the privilege of teaching” from the Church
and “exemptions from financial and military services” from the state. In North and West
Africa, as in the rest of the Islamic world, there was no counterpart to the Catholic Church.
The state “did confer gifts and privileges on important scholars … but these were individuals
or families, not a corporation of teachers or students.”6 To say this is to state the obvious:
6
Timothy Cleaveland, “Timbuktu and Walata: Lineages and Higher Education,” in Shamil jeppie and Suleymane
Bachir Diagne, The Meanings of Timbuktu, Pretoria: HSRC Press, 2008, p. 78
3
the overall context in the development of what we now know as the “university” was not the
same in Africa as in medieval Europe.
Al Karaouine had a distinguished alumni, including at least three illustrious persons. The
first was Leo Africanus. Born in Grenada of a family whichthen moved to Fez, Leo Africanus
visited Timbuktu, was later captured during Ottoman conquest of Egypt and taken to Europe,
where he wrote a manuscript ultimately published as A Geographic History of Africa.It is said
that Shakespeare’s Othello was based on the historical person of Leo Africanus.7The second
was Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, Maimonedes, head of the Jewish community in Egypt and
the great scholar of the Torah. Like many literate Africans of the period who wrote in ajami,
Maimonedes too wrote in the Arabic script. And the third was Ibn Khaldun.
It was significant though not at all unusual that Ibn Khaldum had visited the great educational
institution, Sankora, in Timbuktu, for Sankora was very much part of an intellectual world
knitted together by a shared script, Arabic. Timbuktu reached the peak of its development
under the rule of Mansa Musa (1312-37). Then, this town of 100,000 included a student
population of 25,000. According to Ibn Battuta, the libraries at Sankora had 400,000 to
700,000 manuscripts. On the African continent, this holding was second only to that at the
library of Alexandria. The continued stability of Sankora was ensured by a pact between the
scholars who ran it and the powers who ruled over it: scholars did not interfere in royal rule
and the rulers in turn guaranteed the autonomy of scholars and scholarship.
The point of this paper is not simply to provide a summary of key ideas that drive this
text. It is also to begin a discussion on why this famous text is relevant to rethinking about
Africa today. I sum up key points in this discussion as six critical engagements with The
Muqaddimah. Together, they identify the outlines of a discussion on the contemporary
relevance of this text. The first engagement was in response to a single question: was Ibn
Khaldun part of the African tradition? That question led to others: What was Africa in the 9th
century, when Ibn Khaldun lived and wrote in a place called Ifriqiyya (contemporary Tunisia
and Western Algeria)? What is the history of the geographywe call Africa? Is Islam (and for
that matter, Christianity) and Arabic part of the historical African tradition?
If there is one lesson we can draw from the colonial discourse and practice on tradition, it
is that there is no single and authoritative – or authentic – African tradition. There is no
authoritative – or authentic – tradition, whether African or other. Tradition is best thought of
as a set of debates, both roads taken and those not taken.8 Taken as this, tradition is a totality
of resources from which to craft possible futures. Not only are African traditions multiple,
but the traditions that inform life of people on the African continent, today as in the past, are
also multiple. The African heritage is not just drawn from within the territorial boundaries
of the continent. The life of societies on the African continent is informed by a multiplicity
7
8
4
For a fictionalized biography of Leo Africanus, read: Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus
Talal Asad, See, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam”, Occasional Papers, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies,
Georgetown University, Washington, 1986.
of traditions. These include Islam and Arabic. To acknowledge this is to move away from
a notion of culture (and tradition) as authentic but frozen to a notion of culture as alive and
changing, understood as forms of knowledge of self, the other and the environment.
Research on the written tradition in Africa is relatively recent. Part of the reason lies in the
wide acceptance of two assumptions: that Africa is an oral civilization, and that the literature
written in Arabic is not part of African civilization. The written tradition in Abyssinia and
Ethiopia is said to be exceptional, part of an external Semitic (Asiatic) influence. And yet
we know that whereas the world has known hundreds of languages, there have been and
are no more than a handful of scripts: Latin, Arabic, Amharic, Chinese, Devnagari, Pali
and so on. The written tradition in Africa before Western colonialism was primarily in the
Arabic script. Arabic manuscripts were “read and appreciated” in West Africa “since the
conversion of rulers to Islam” in the 11th century.The first chronicle in Ethiopia, composed
in early 13th century, was written in the Arabic script.9Present research suggests that “West
Africans began to produce their own manuscripts … as early as the 16th century.”10The use
of the written script for local production was delayed “for practical reasons, notably the lack
of paper.” Arabic was also the script of Kiswahili on the East African coast from at least the
17th century11and of early Afrikaans in South Africa from the 18th century.12
The replacement of the Arabic script by Latin was a consequence of colonization and is an
important part of the historical narrative ofHausa,13 Kiswahili and Afrikaans, among other
languages. To consign Arabic, script and civilization, to the category “non-African” is to
perform an historical erasure with a triple consequence: the erasure of a millennium-long
early cosmopolitanism driven by the Arabic script; its displacement by a claim that Africa
lacks a written tradition, that the African tradition is oral, making the story of Ethiopia and the
Amharic scriptanother Semitic exception in the African story; and finally, the identification
9
10
11
12
13
“The chronicle is composed sometime in the beginning of the 13th century and its called Zhikr al tawaraikh. The
earliest Christian Chronicle is composed in the 14th century so the Islamic one preceds it by about a century. The
chronicle was discovered by Enrico Cerulli, the reknowned Italian Ethiopicist in 1936 and was published by him
in 1941. Islamic manuscripts both in Arabic and Ajami have been composed at least since this time and the country
has one of the largest manuscripts in the continent. Harar in Eastern ethiopia, Wollo and Shoa in Central Ethiopia
and Arsi, Bale and Jima in Oromo country are among the places where such manuscripts are found.” Email from
Semeneh Ayalew, MISR doctoral program, June 13, 2012
Sheila S. Blair, “Arabic Callipgraphy in West Africa,” in Shamil jeppie and Suleymane Bachir Diagne, The Meanings
of Timbuktu, Pretoria: HSRC Press, 2008, pp. 69-70.
Dating is difficult and approximate. Consider the following statement: “In presenting a very preliminary periodisation,
one must begin with the poetic cycle by, or about, Fumi Liongo, a figure of anywhere between the 7th and 17th
centuries, who may have existed or not, and who may have written some, but surely not all, of the poetry ascribed to
him.” R. Sean O’Fahey, “Arabic Literature in the Eastern Half of Africa,” in Shamil jeppie and Suleymane Bachir
Diagne, The Meanings of Timbuktu, Pretoria: HSRC Press, 2008, p. 343
Early Afrikaans, developed as a pidgin from both Dutch and Malay. Its writing, pioneered mainly by religious
teachers of Malay origin, was in the Arabic script. Over time, the script was modified in parts to suit the needs spoken
Afrikaans. The first two written texts in Afrikaans were commentaries on the Qur’an, their publication funded by the
Ottoman empire. Suleman Essop Dangor, “Arabic-Afrikaans at the Literature,” Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 45, (1),
2008
The contemporary movement known as Boko Haram (the book is haram, forbidden) traces its genealogy to the
resistance against this shift: the book referred to as haram was the Hausa text written in the Latin script. I am grateful
to Tade Aina for pointing this out to me.
5
of the written tradition in Africa with the dominance of European power, the spread of
European languages and overwhelming presence of the Latin script.
To locate Ibn Khaldum and The Muqaddimah in an intellectual tradition is to place it in two
primary contexts: the first that of the Arabic-writing world, and the second that of the Greekwriting Mediterranean world. To read The Muqaddimah is to realize that ancient Greeks
were part of the tradition that drove its author.
Ibn Khaldun wrote The Muqaddimah in 1377. It was the first of a three-part work. The
second part was a history of Berbers and Arabs, Persians, Romans and other peoples; and
the third part was autobiography. This second part was published as a translation, Histoire
des Berberes, in 1854. The translation ofThe Muqaddimahfollowed in 1858. Well known in
late 19th c Europe, this translation was read by Emile Durkhiem who considered it important
enough to have an Egyptian PhD student working on it.14
On History and Historiography
Ibn Khaldun’s known world included Sudanic Africa and the Mediterranean lands. It did
not include Africa to the south of Timbuktu, Asia to the East of Persia, or the lands west
of Greece and north of Spain. The parameters of his world were defined by the geography
of the Mediterranean and Sudanic Africa. There are few places that Ibn Khaldun identifies
south of the Saharan belt. One of these is Berbera, lying “south of the Indian Ocean”,15 and
the other recalls modern day Lake Victoria and the two rivers, the Blue and the White Nile:
“ten days journey” from “Mountains of the Qumr,” he writes, lies “a large lake at the equator
– two rivers issue from it, one goes through the land of the Nuba thru Egypt, the other due
west to the sea.16
Writing the history of the world he knew, Ibn Khaldun noted three pitfalls the historian must
avoid. Form this followed three imperatives: to be aware of knowledge already lost and thus
no longer available; to cultivate a critical perspective on available evidence; and, finally, to
be alert to the possibility of bias in interpretation.
Lost Knowledge and Partial Information
“The sciences of only one nation, the Greeks, have come down to us,” noted Ibn Khaldun,
“because they were translated through al-Ma’mun’s efforts [more on this later – MM].
He was successful in this direction because he had many translators at his disposal and
spent much money in this connection. Of the sciences of others, nothing has come to our
14 Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldun Orientalist,” History and Theory, vol.
12, no. 1 (February, 2003), pp. 66-67
15 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, p. 51
16 ibid. pp. 52-53
6
attention.”17 This realization pointed to a larger problem: “There have been numerous sages
among the nations of mankind. The knowledge that has not come down to us is larger than
the knowledge that has. Where are the sciences of the Persians that ‘Umar ordered to be
wiped out at the time of the conquest? Where are the sciences of the Chaldaeans, the Syrians,
and the Babylonians, and the scholarly products and the results that were theirs? Where are
the sciences of the Copts, their predecessors?”18
The students at MISR read Ibn Khaldun following a reading of meta-histories and microhistories. The section on meta-histories focused on Eurocentric world histories and their
critics: the former claimed ancient Greece as the starting point and foundation of both the
history of the West and of world history; on that assumption, they either wrote Africa outside
that history or wrote it on the margins (e.g., the history produced by Hegel). The critics
of metahistory – W. E. B. Du Bois, Cheikh Anta Diop and Martin Bernal – claimed that
it was Pharoahnic Egypt and surrounding territories, and not ancient Greece, that should
be seen as foundational to world history. With their adversaries, they shared a parochial
understanding of “the world” as basically limited to the Mediterranean. Whereas Ibn
Khaldun’s world was similarly limited, he did not share their understanding of the pivotal
significance of Pharaohnic Egypt in intellectual history. For Ibn Khaldun, the Greeks were
more important to the intellectual history of the region, but the Persians were key: “As far
as our historical information goes, these sciences were most extensively cultivated by the
two great pre-Islamic nations, the Persians and the Greeks (Rum).”19In contrast, the Copts
[Egyptians] in particular, and their contemporaries, the Syrians, “were much concerned with
sorcery and astrology and the related subjects of powerful (charms) and talismans.”20Ibn
Khaldun considered astrology of little interest or value, at one point even remarking on “the
worthlessness of astrology.”21
The legacy that is critical to understanding the development of sciences among the Greeks
is that of Persians, not Egyptians. “Among the Persians, the intellectual sciences played
a large and important role, since the Persian dynasties were powerful and ruled without
interruption. The intellectual sciences are said to have come to the Greeks from the Persians,
when Alexander killed Darious and gained control of the Archemaemenid empire. At that
time, he appropriated the books and sciences of the Persians.”22 Alexander may have defeated
the Persian empire militarily, but the Persians colonized the Greeks culturally. This is how
Ibn Khaldun traced the genealogy that linked Greek science to that of the Persians: “The
Peripatetic philosophers, in particular the Stoics, possessed a good method of instruction in
the intellectual sciences. It has been assumed that they used to study in a Stoa, which protected
them from the sun and the cold. Their school tradition is assumed to have passed from the
17
18
19
20
21
22
ibid. p. 39
ibid.
ibid. p. 391
“The Copts especially cultivated those things.” ibid. p. 392
Ibid. p. 409
ibid. p. 372
7
sage Luqman and his pupils to Socrates of the barrel, and then, in succession, to Socrates’
pupil, Plato, to Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, to Aristotle’s pupils, Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Thelmistius, and others.”23
For the readers of The Muqaddimahin Kampala, a broadening of the notion of the ancient
Mediterranean world beyond Greece and Egypt toPersia, in particular, ledto a second critical
engagement. This broader historical vision challenged the assumption that underlay the
debate between Afrocentricsand Eurocentrics. Bringing Persia into the frame undercut the
alternatives in the debate – that civilization began in either ancient Greece or in Pharoahnic
Egypt – and offered a third alternative: in neither.But there is a larger issue here. It may be
futile to look for a single origin of civilization. May be the origin of civilization – by which
Ibn Khaldun meant the intellectual pursuits, arts and crafts associated with the stability of
urban life – is not in a place but in an encounter. From this point of view, the search for
a single place, a single origin, appears yet another version of the continuation of the 19th
century race-based search for purity. The alternative would be to think not in terms of one
original inspiration but a plurality of influences, not in a single origin but in confluence.
Critically Assessing Available Evidence
What is history? At the most elementary level, notes Ibn Khaldun: “History refers to events
that are peculiar to a particular age or race [on the translation of the Arabic original as
‘race’, see later - MM]. Discussion[s] of the general conditions of regions, races, and periods
constitutes the historian’s foundation. Most of his problems rest on that foundation, and his
historical information derives clarity from it.”24This is why “mere blind imitation of former
authors” will not work. Those who resort to it “disregard the intentions of the former authors
and forget to pay attention to historiography’s purpose.”25
To begin with, historical narrative requires periodization. Change is normal and a historian
who ignoresthis is sure to be lead astray: “A hidden pitfall in historiography is disregard
for the fact that conditions within nations and races change with the change of periods and
the passage of time.”26 For an exemplary history that takes into account changes in general
conditions, Ibn Khaldun pointed to al-Masudi’s account of the plague in the 14th century.27
As demonstrated by Persian history, change at its most basic level affects institutions and
customs,: “The old institutions changed and former customs were transformed, … Then,
there came Islam. Again, all institutions underwent another change.”28
23
24
25
26
27
28
8
ibid. p. 373
Ibid. p. 29
ibid. p. 29
ibid. p. 24
ibid. p. 30
ibid. p. 25
If the most basic change concerns a change in institutions and customs, then periodization
should be based on an identification of institutional change, so that events may be narrated
within each period. Here, the historian needs to beware of two dangers. The first is
exaggeration: “It often happens that people are (incredulous) with regard to historical
information, just as it also happens that they are tempted to exaggerate certain information,
in order to be able to report something remarkable.”29 The second stems from a failure to
verify the reliability of sources, both oral and written. Ibn Khaldun’s focus was mainly on
oral tradition. How does the historian go beyond checking the factual truth of the information
transmitted to judging its historical credibility?“If he trusts historical information in its plain
transmitted form and has no clear knowledge of the principles resulting from custom, the
fundamental facts of politics, the nature of civilization, or the conditions governing human
social organization, and if, furthermore, he does not evaluate remote or ancient material
through comparison with near or contemporary material, he often cannot avoid stumbling and
slipping and deviating from the path of truth. Historians, Qur’an commentators and leading
transmitters have committed frequent errors in the stories and events they have reported.
Hey accepted them in the plain transmitted form, without regard for its value. They did not
check them with the principles underlying such historical situations, nor did they compare
them with similar material. Also, they did not probe with the yardstick of philosophy, with
the help of knowledge of the nature of things, or with the help of speculation and historical
insight.”30For examples of those who were so misled, Ibn Khaldun turns, among others, to
al-Masudi31, to the history of Yemen32, and to interpretations of Qur’an.33
Ibn Khaldun locates the development of scholarship as a craft within the larger discussion
of oral tradition and in particular the discussion of Qur’anic scholarship. His point is that
scholarship in the period of the early dynasties of Muslim rule, the Umayyad and the Abbasid,
was not a craft. While information was transmitted from one person to another, there was
neither the development of norms to check errors in this process of transmission nor the
development of a class of scholars: “Scholarship, in general, was not a craft in that [Umayyad
and the Abbasid] period. Scholarship consisted of transmitting statements that people had
heard the Lawgiver [Muhammad] make.” But then, “[F]ar off nations accepted Islam at the
hands of Muslims. With the passing of time, the situation of Islam changed. Many new
laws were evolved from (basic) texts as the result of numerous and unending developments.
A fixed norm was required to keep (the process) free from error. Scholarship came to be a
habit. For its acquisition, study was required. Thus, scholarship developed into a craft and
a profession. The men who controlled the group feeling now occupied themselves with
directing the affairs of royal and governmental authority. The cultivation of scholarship was
29
30
31
32
33
ibid. p. 146
ibid. p. 11
ibid. p. 11
ibid. p. 14
ibid. p. 17
9
entrusted to others.”34 Not only did scholarship emerge as the object of specialized study,
scholars too emerged as a class specialized and separate from the class that ruled.
Bias in Perspective
Besides acknowledging lost evidence and the need to evaluate critically all available evidence,
Ibn Khaldun noted a third set of dangers that the historian must beware of: “partisanship for
a particular opinion or sect,” “reliance upon [unreliable] transmitters” and lack of awareness
of the wider significance of an event.35These may be summed up under one heading: bias
in perspective. Ibn Khaldun warned historians against “unawareness of the purpose of an
event”,arguing that knowing “the nature of events and the circumstances and requirements
in the world of existence, [it] will help him to distinguish truth from untruth in investing the
historical information critically.”36 This, he noted, was “more powerful than all the reasons
previously mentioned.”37 An additional problem was the tendency of historians to approach
“great and high-ranking persons with praise and encomiums,”38 why history-writing must be
the vocation of “critical scholars.”39
The focus on oral evidence and on the development of rules and methods to check the accuracy
of oral transmission led to a third critical engagement among the readers of The Muqaddamah
in Kampala. Ever since postwar nationalism led to a decolonizing movement among African
intellectuals, there had been great stress on the need to rewrite the history of Africa, to seize
it from colonial officials and missionaries. In that context, the debate had focused on the
question of historical sources, in particular on the reliability of oral evidence. Though this
debate has come to be identified with the Wisconsin School and the writings of Jan Vansina40,
the most perceptive writings on the question came from the pen of Yusuf Bala Usman, the
leading historian at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.41 Why focus on the reliability of
only one source of historical information, the oral? Why not also focus on the reliability
of written sources too? Why limit attention to the subjectivity of the one who supplies
information, why not also the subjectivity of the author who processes and interprets this
information? We may add other questions: Did not such a specialized class, one preoccupied
with questions of tradition, its transmission and its adaptation, develop in polities like the
Nyiginya kingdom in Rwanda and the kingdom of Buganda next door? The evidence points
to one conclusion: surely, a comparative study of oral tradition, including questions of its
transmission and adaptation– a query that brings the study of sunna and of custom under a
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
10
ibid. pp. 26-27
ibid. p. 35
ibid. pp. 35, 36
ibid. p. 36
ibid. p. 36
ibid. p. 38
Jan Vansina, “Oral tradition and its methodology,” UNESCO History of Africa, volume I, (142-165)
See, Yusuf Bala Usman, “The Assessment of Primary Sources: Heinrich Barth in Katsina, 1851-1854,” in Beyond
Fairy Tales: Selected Historical Writings of Yusufu Bala Usman (Zaria: Abdullahi Smith Centre for Historical
Research, 2006).
single roof – is long overdue. Second, surely a perspective that thinks of oral tradition purely
in terms of state tradition – thereby highlighting the distinction between written and oral state
traditions - is to ignore the fact that written and oral traditions exist within the same society
and polity. As different schools of historians – from social historians to feminists – have
found out, oral tradition is a vital resource from which to capture the agency of those groups
excluded from the written tradition that is often authorized as history.
The Nature of Man (the Human) and of Civilization
What distinguishes man from other forms of life? Ibn Khaldun identifies five qualities in
particular of the human: “… man is distinguished from the other living beings by certain
qualities peculiar to him, namely: (1) The sciences and crafts which result from that ability
to think which distinguishes man from the other animals and exalts him as a thinking being
over all creatures. (2) The need for restraining influence and strong authority, since man,
alone of all the animals, cannot exist without them. It is true, something has been said in
this connection about bees and locusts. However, if they have something similar, it comes
to them through inspiration [instinct], not through thinking or reflection. (3) Man’s efforts
to make a living and his concern with various ways of obtaining and acquiring the means of
life. This is the result of man’s need for food to keep alive and subsist, which God instilled
in him … (4) Civilization. This means that human beings have to dwell in common and settle
together in cities and hamlets for the comforts of companionship and for the satisfaction of
human needs, as a result natural disposition of human beings towards cooperation in order
to be able to make a living, as we shall explain.”42 (all italics mine)
The Ability to Think
For Ibn Khaldun, the disposition to think is natural, and exists among all humans, although to
different degrees: “This natural disposition to think, which is the real meaning of humanity,
exists among men in different degrees.”43 Whereas it is the ability to think that makes for
the quality we call human, no civilization is possible without developing an authority strong
enough to exercise a restraining influence. There are only two possible sources of restraint:
faith or reason. Restraint is based either on rational politics or on religious law, and rational
politics has in turn to be based either on general interest or on the interest of the ruler.44
Unlike Aristotle who argued that some were born to be slaves – natural slaves – and others
acquired reason as they advanced beyond childhood, Ibn Khaldun did not think of the world
42 ibid. p. 43
43 ibid. p. 320
44 ibid. p. 256-57; at another point in the text, Ibn Khaldun discusses how cooperation may develop through social
organization for food, for defence against predators, and as a consequence of the royal authority exercising restraining
influence. Ibid. pp. 45-47
11
of humans as divided between those with reason and those without it. The real difference,
for him, was between those who lived a settled life under a restraining authority and those
who did not. But this distinction, too, was not natural. The case of Bedouins and Berbers
demonstrated that humans had the ability to develop civilization, i.e., the capacity to live a
settled life under a restraining authority.
According to Ibn Khaldun, the ability to think develops through three stages: from perception
(of sense data) to apperception (i.e., using reason to make connections between perceived
data) to hypothetical knowledge beyond sense perception. Perception of individual sense
data is based on discerning intellect, and is acquired in the course of obtaining livelihood and
avoiding harm. Thought proper begins with apperception and is the result of experimental
intellect that gives rise to “scientific perceptions”. Finally, there is hypothetical knowledge
of an object, one “beyond sense perception” and “without any practical activity,” which is
result of speculative intellect.45
To reason then is to establish connections between what the senses perceive: “Animals
perceive only with the senses. Their perceptions are disconnected and lack a connecting
link, since only thinking can constitute such (a link).”46 Our humanity is our ability to
establish a causal chain in the sense data we perceive in the external world: “The degree
to which a human being is able to establish an orderly causal chain determines his degree
of humanity.”47 To make the point, he gave the example of a game of chess: “For instance,
some chess players are able to perceive (in advance) three of five moves, the order of which
is arbitrary.”48
Ibn Khaldun says that “sound intuition”led him to “observe in ourselves … the existence
of three worlds.” In the first world, which includes all forms of life, there is no distinction
between human and animal: “The first of them is the world of sensual perception … which
the animals share with us.” The distinction between human and animal defines the second
world; this distinction arises with the ability to think: “Then we become aware of the ability
to think which is a special quality of human beings. We learn from it that the human soul
exists. This knowledge is necessitated by the fact that we have in us scientific perceptions
which are above the perceptions of the senses.” The distinction between the human and the
45 “The ability to think has several degrees. The first degree … consists of perceptions. It is the discerning intellect
with the help of which man obtains the things which are useful for him and his livelihood, and repels the things that
are harmful to him. … The second degree is the ability to think which … mostly conveys apperceptions, which
are obtained one by one through experience, until they have become really useful. This is called the experimental
intellect. The third degree is the ability to think which provides the knowledge, or hypothetical knowledge, of an
object beyond sense perception without any practical activity (going with it). This is the speculative intellect. It
consists of both perceptions and apperceptions.” Ibid. pp. 333-34.
46 Ibid. p. 335
47 ibid. p. 335
48 ibid. pp. 336. “… the ability to think … through which man is able to arrange his actions in an orderly manner. This
is the discerning intellect. Or, when it helps him to acquire from his fellow men a knowledge of ideas and of the
things that are useful or detrimental to him, it is the experimental intellect. Or when it helps him to obtain perception
of the existent things as they are, whether they are absent or present, it is the speculative intellect.” Ibid. p. 339
12
divine lies in the limits of human reason: given that human experience is limited, human
abstraction from sense data is necessarily limited. Only one power is capable of abstracting
from the universal: God.49
I have already pointed out that though Ibn Khaldun speaks of “degrees of humanity” based
on the ability to make connections and abstract from these, at no point does he suggest that
the world of humans is divided on the basis of inheritance, into those able to think and those
not, as with Aritotle’s “natural slaves.” The distinction in “degrees of humanity” is based,
rather, on degrees of comprehension thatis in turn the result of different methods of study.
From this point of view, the problem is two-fold: memorizing and severe punishment.
Memorizing is a hindrance to understanding: “Some students spend most of their lives
attending scholarly sessions. Still one finds them silent. … More than is necessary, they
are concerned with memorizing. Thus, they do not obtain much of a habit in the practice of
science and scientific instruction.”50 Memorizing, which focuses on results at the expense
of process, obstructs the practice of science.Ibn Khaldun was at pains to emphasize, first,
how not to study and, then, how to study. Any method that subordinated process to outcome
was subject to question: “Scholars often approach the main scholarly works on the various
disciplines, which are very lengthy, intending to interpret and explain (them). This has a
corrupting influence … For it confuses the beginner by presenting the final results of a
discipline to him before he is prepared for them. This is a bad method of instruction.”51
As alternative to rote learning, Ibn Khaldun proposed a method of study involving a threefold reading, seemingly repetitive, but not quite. The first reading would focus on a summary
identification of the main problems. The second reading would focus on full commentaries
and explanations that identify main debates. And the final reading would expose the student
to all: text, commentaries and debates.
It should be known that the teaching of scientific subjects to students is effective only
when it proceeds gradually and little by little. At first, (the teacher) presents (the
student) with the principle problems within each chapter of a given discipline. He
acquaints him with them by commenting on them in a summary fashion. …
The teacher, then, leads the student back over the discipline a second time. … He
no longer gives a summary, but full commentaries and explanations. He mentions
to him the existing differences of opinion and the form these differences take all the
way through to the end of the discipline under consideration. …Then, the teacher
leads the student back again, now that he is solidly grounded. He leaves nothing that
49 “Then we deduce (the existence of) a third world, above us, … such as volition and an inclination towards active
motions. Thus we know that there exists an agent there who directs us towards those things from a world above our
world. That world is the world of spirits and angels.” Ibid., pp. 337-38. “All prophets possess this predisposition …
exchanging their humanity for angelicality.” Ibid. p. 339
50 ibid. p. 341
51 ibid. p. 415
13
is complicated, vague or obscure, unexplained. …This is the effective method of
instruction. As one see, it requires a threefold repetition. …
many teachers … begin their instruction by confronting the student with obscure
scientific problems. They require him to concentrate on solving them. They think
that that is experienced and correct teaching, and they make it the task of the student
to comprehend and know such things. In actual fact, they confuse him by exposing
him to the final results of a discipline at the beginning (of his studies) and before he is
prepared to understand them.52
To illustrate the difference between the two methods, Ibn Khaldun contraststwo methods
of studying the Qur’an: the Maghribi and the Spanish. The former abstracted the study of
Qur’an from context whereas the latter taught it in context: “The Maghribi method is to
restrict the education of children to instruction in the Qur’an … The (Maghribis) do not
bring up any other subject in their classes, such as traditions, jurisprudence, poetry, or Arabic
philology, until the pupil is skilled in (the Qur’an) or drops out before becoming skilled
in it.” He contrasted this with the Spanish method: “The Spanish method is instruction in
reading and writing as such. … However since the Qur’an is the basis and foundation of
all that and the source of Islam and all the sciences, they make it the basis of instruction, but
they do not restrict the instruction of their children exclusively to the Qur’an.” And then
concluded with a preference for the method employed in Ifriqiyah: “The people of Ifriqiyah
combine the instruction of children in the Qur’an, usually, with the teaching of traditions. …
their method of instruction in the Qur’an is closer to the Spanish method (than to Maghribi or
Eastern methods) because their (educational tradition) derives from the Spanish shaykhs who
crossed over when the Christians conquered Spain, and asked for hospitality in Tunis.”53
As harmful as rote learning, and closely associated to it, is the regime of severe punishment.
“Severe punishment in the course of instruction does harm to the student, especially to little
children, …” Like rote learning, severe punishment also deadens the spirit of inquiry and
prepares the young for subjugation: “Students, slaves and servants who are brought up with
injustice and (tyrannical) force are overcome by it. It makes them feel oppressed and causes
them to loose their energy. It makes them lazy and induces them to lie and be insincere. That
is, their outward behavior differs from what they are thinking, because they are afraid that
they will have to suffer tyrannical treatment (if they tell the truth).” Severe punishment is
the lot of a people who fall under tyranny: “Thus, they are taught deceit and trickery. This
becomes their custom and character. They lose the quality that goes with social and political
organization and makes people human, namely, (the desire to) protect and defend themselves
and their homes, and they become dependent on others. … As a result they revert to the
52 ibid. pp. 416-17
53 ibid. p. 424. Ibn Khaldun also notes al-Arabi’s advice that students should begin with poetry, then Arabic philology,
then arithmetic, and only then move to the study of the Qur’an.
14
stage of ‘the lowest of the low’. That is what happened to every nation that fell under the
yoke of tyranny and learned through it the meaning of injustice.”54
On Difference Among Humans
“… differences of condition among people are the result of the different ways in which they
make their living.” The Muqaddimah, p. 91
The Muqaddimah identifies three groups as outside the pale of civilization: Negroes55 of
the forest, Slavs of the cold regions and Bedouins of the desert. There are a few isolated
references to the Slavs, but there is a lengthier discussion of Negroes inThe Muqaddimah.
For information on how they live and associate, Ibn Khaldun is dependent on other sources
– which he seems to take for granted. Whereas the information on how Negroes live and
behave is not subjected to a critical discussion. The debate in The Muqaddimahfocuses on the
possible causes of their behaviour: Is the cause biology (inheritance) or geography (climate)
or history (custom)?
Consider the following account: “It has even been reported that most of the Negroes of the
first zone dwell in caves and thickets, eat herbs, live in savage isolation and do not congregate,
and eat each other. The same applies to the Slavs. The reason for this is that their remoteness
from being temperate produces in them a disposition and a character similar to those of dumb
animals, and they become correspondingly remote from humanity. The same also applies
to their religious conditions. They are ignorant of prophecy and do not have a religious law,
except for a small minority that lives near the temperate regions.”56 This small minority is
identified as Abyssinians who are Christians and the inhabitants of Mali, Gawgaw and Takrur
who are Muslims.
At another point, Ibn Khaldun writes that Negroes are “in general characterized by levity,
excitability and great emotionalism” – as, he says,are coastal peoples like Egyptians in contrast
to the inhabitants of Fez in the Maghreb.57 Two pages later, he adds nomadic Arabs to this list
of the uncivilized: “Another such people are the Arabs who roam the waste regions.”58There
is no doubt that the statement most offensive to a modern sensibility concerns Negroes, and
not Slavs, nor Bedouins: “the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because
(Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar
to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.”59
Ibn Khaldun takes these claims for granted. His concern is not to verify them but to question
54 Ibid. pp. 424-25
55 In his discussion of this paper at the Kampala workshop, Salah Hasan raised the question as to which Arab word
Rosenthal had translated into ‘Negro’.
56 ibid. p. 59
57 ibid. p. 63
58 ibid. p. 65
59 ibid. p. 117
15
those who explain them as the consequence of biological inheritance. The butt of his criticism
is directed at two sources: the first is al-Masudi, and the second the Bible. He flatly disagrees
withal-Masudi’s claim that “levity, excitability and emotionalism” in Negroes is the result of
“a weakness of their brains which results in a weakness of their intellect.”“This,” he says,“is
an inconclusive and unproven statement.”60
In opposition to the Biblical account known as the Hamitic Hypothesis – that Noah’s son,
Ham, was cursed, which is why he and his progenies have remained black and have been
cursed to serve others –he proposes a counter-thesis based on “the true nature of heat and
cold and of the influence they exercise upon the climate and upon the creatures that come
into being in it.” He thus goes on to claim: “The black skin common to the inhabitants of
the first and second zones is the result of the composition of the air in which they live, and
which comes about under the influence of the greatly increased heat in the south.”61 White
skin, too, is the result of climate.62 Simply put, the argument is that color is a consequence
of climate.
Ibn Khaldun divides the world into different climactic zones: the “1st and 2nd zones are
excessively hot and black.”He attributes “very little civilization” in these areas to “excessive
heat”63– and cites as support those philosophers whose views are based on observation and
continuous tradition and not speculation.64 He further claims that Negroes who settle in the
North tend to turn white and the color of whites who settle in the South tends to blackness:
“This shows that color is conditioned by the composition of the air.”65
The account of “savagery” in The Muqaddimah focuses on two groups in particular: Negroes
and Bedouins, the former inhabitants of the forest and the latter of the desert. Whereas the
account of forest Negroes is wholly negative and one-sided, that of Bedouins of the desert
is not. Bedouins are “closer to being good than sedentary people” because “sedentary life
constitutes the last stage of civilization and the point where it begins to decay.”66There is
an upside to savagery: “since desert life no doubt is the source of bravery, savage groups
are braver than others.”67 But there is also a downside: “It is their nature to plunder.”68
Indeed, savage domination spells the doom of civilization: “Under the rule of Bedouins, their
subjects live in a state of anarchy, without law. … It is noteworthy how civilization always
collapsed in places the Bedouins took over and conquered, and how such settlements were
60 ibid. p. 64
61 ibid. p. 60.
62 “Genealogists think difference is due exclusively to descent. Thus the claim that Noah’s three sons gave birth
to three races: Negroes of Ham, those in the north of Japheth, and those in the temperate nations descendants of
Shem. But distinctions also caused by ‘geographical location and physical marks,’ ‘custom and distinguishing
characteristics’ besides ‘descent’.” Ibid. pp. 61-62.
63 ibid. p. 57
64 ibid. p. 57
65 ibid. p. 60
66 ibid. p. 94
67 ibid. pp. 94, 107
68 ibid. p. 118
16
depopulated and laid in ruin.”69 In Ibn Khaldun’s account, the Berbers are the Bedouins
of North Africa: “The inhabitants of Eastern Spain [who] were expelled by the Christians
and moved to Ifriqiyah … and the Maghreb did not find there any old tradition of sedentary
culture, because the original population had been Berbers immersed in Bedouin life.”70
The discussion of ‘difference’ in Ibn Khaldun was the focus of a fourth critical engagement.
What sense should one make of the use of the term ‘race’ in the 14th century? At the same
time, one could not ignore obvious connections between Ibn Khaldun’s description of forest
Negroes and much of the racist literature of the centuries that followed. The first question
led us to an exploration of the politics of translation.
In an illuminating article on the subject, Abdelmajid Hannoum points to how William de
Slane’s translation into French of The Muqaddimah (1858) and Histoires des Berberes earlier
(1854)deeply influenced subsequent translations, including that in English. At issue is De
Slane’s translation of two key words: jil and umma.71 Hannoum points out that Ibn Khaldun
used umma to mean a historical community, and jil to mean either (a) a group defined by a
common phenotype (with strong implications of climate changing the color of one’s skin)
and (b) culture that is the result of economic activity.72 De Slaney translated jil and umma
as ‘race’ and ‘nation.’ So did Franz Rosenthal in the English translation!73Ibn Khaldun’s
use of jil and ummalays great stress on diversity – deeds (hasab) do not last more than four
centuries, and deed and nobility in turn shape inheritance – there is no such focus on internal
diversity in De Slaney’s translation of these words.74
Was Ibn Khaldun a racist? Were his views on group behavior no different from the
ethnocentrism characteristic of his generation and his times? I do not think so. Consider this
insightful paragraph in The Muqaddimah, in which Ibn Khaldun discusses how to understand
the those who use color to describe others:
69 ibid. p. 119
70 ibid. pp. 266, 283-84
71 Abdelmajid Hannoum, “Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldun Orientalist,” History and Theory, vol.
12, no. 1 (February, 2003), pp. 73-75. I am thankful to Fatima Harrack for introducing me to this article.
72 The English word for jil, claimed Salah Hasan at the Kampala workshop, is really generation.
73 ibid. p. 75ff
74 William de Slane’s translation of the second part of Ibn Khaldun as Histoires des Berberes not only became “the
source of French knowledge of North Africa.” It also deeply influenced subsequent translations, including that in
English, and became, from 1930 on, the foundation of nationalist historiography of North Africa. The result was
to present the story of Berbers and Arabs as a history of two races, with the Arabs foreign conquerors and Berbers
an indigenous conquered people. The implication was that Berbers, an indigenous white people, though primitive,
represented “past Europeans”, whereas Ibn Khaldun’s story was that Berbers and Arabs were two sections of the
same group, of same origin, but with different migrations. De Slaney wrote in the opening page of his translation:
“The task of the translator is not limited to the exact reproduction of ideas uttered in the text that is the subject of his
translation. There are other obligations as well. He should rectify the errors of the author, clarify the passages that
offer some obscurities, provide ideas that lead to the perfect understanding of the narrative and give the necessary
assistance to make the book better understood.” (p. 1 of translation) Hannoum comments that the translation
domesticated the foreign text, not only the interpretation of it, but it actually made for the production of an entirely
new text. ibid. pp.75, 77, 61-62, 65, 73, 78.
17
“The inhabitants of the north are not called by their color, because the people who established
the conventional meanings of words were themselves white. Thus, whiteness was something
usual and common to them, and they did not see anything sufficiently remarkable in it to
cause them to use it as a specific term.”75
There is much that is objectionable in the uncritical way in which The Muqaddimah repeats
received descriptions of group behavior as accepted truth. At the same time, Ibn Khaldun
does not make generalizations about all Negroes, but about forest Negroes, as he does about
desert Arabs. In both instances, the rationale is the same: that each lives in a particular
climactic zone which conditions group behavior.
The Development and the History of the Sciences
The Muqaddimmah is both a history of science and an attempt to transform history-writing
from a craft to a science. In writing the history of science, Ibn Khaldun separates the
material from the metaphysical. An understanding of the material world the domain of
reason; the capacity to reason is common to all humans.76 But the same can not be said of
the metaphysical. As Ahmad Dallal has pointed out, Ibn Khaldun “rejected the assertion
by Muslim philosophers that prophets are a logical necessity for human societies.” For
Ibn Khaldun, religion is not “a logical necessity”: “social and political life does not need
religions or prophets, as countless forms of social order not predicated on religion attest.”
What is necessary is group solidarity (asabiya), of which religion is but a special case, and
coercive power.77
Civilization for Ibn Khaldun was essentially urban. Referring to the Greeks, he wrote
approvingly: “The adjective ‘political’ refers to the ‘town’ (polis), which they use as another
word for human social organization.”78Part of civilization is the development of sciences and
crafts. The precondition for both is the availability of surplus labor.79
Ibn Khaldun divided the sciences into two kinds: the traditional sciences and the philosophical
sciences. The former are based on the authority of religious law of one kind or another, and
75 The Muqaddimah, pp. 60-61
76 “The intellectual sciences are natural to man, inasmuch as he is a thinking being. They are not restricted to any
particular religious group. They are studied by the people of all religious groups, who are all equally qualified to
learn them and to do research in them.” The Muqaddimmah, p. 371
77 Ahmad Dallal, Islam, Science and the Challenge of History, The Terry Lectures, Yale University Press, 2010, pp.
109, 146
78 Ibid. p. 336
79 “When civilized people have more labor available than they need for mere subsistence, such (surplus) labour is used
for activities over and above making a living. These activities are man’s prerogative. They are the sciences and the
crafts.” Ibid. p. 343
18
are given to “some kind of analogical reasoning” which both “reverts to” tradition and “is
derived from it.” In contrast, the latter are based on research and speculation.80
At the heart of the conventional sciences is jurisprudence, a science that teaches right and
wrong [philosophy] based on laws of God derived from two original sources, the Qur’an and
the Sunnah [tradition]. Early Muslims “unavoidably … differed in its interpretation,” making
for a contradictory legal content in different interpretations. In addition, “there are new cases
which arise and are not covered by the texts. They are referred by analogy to things that are
covered by the texts.” Legal decisions were the prerogative of men “called ‘readers’, that is,
men (able to) read the Qur’an since the Arabs were an illiterate nation.” Ibn Khaldun credits
“constant occupation with the Qur’an” for the disappearance of illiteracy among the Arabs.
As literacy grew, the Qur’an readersbecame jurists and religious scholars.”81
Over time there developed different approaches to jurisprudence among the jurists: “One of
them was based on reasoning and analogy. It was represented by the ‘Iraqis. The other was
based on traditions. It was represented by the Hijazis.”82 This is how the debate between
the two schools developed: “Ash-Shafi’i was the first to discuss, and briefly to describe, the
legal arguments based on the working (of the traditions). Then, the Hanafites appeared and
invented the problems of analogical reasoning and presented them fully.”83
Though there was agreement on the basic sources of legal evidence – the Qur’an, the traditions
(Sunnah), general consensus, and analogy – differences arose: “Difference of opinion results
from the different sources they use and their different outlooks, and are unavoidable.”84 Then
came the study of the meaning of words.85
The rules of argumentation derived from Socrates.“In time, the science of logic spread in
Islam. People studied it. They made a distinction between it and philosophical sciences, in
that logic was merely a norm and a yardstick for arguments and served to probe the arguments
of the (philosophical sciences) as well as (those of) all other (disciplines).”Al-Ghazzali was
“the first scholar to write in accordance with the new theological approach.”86
80 “The sciences … are of two kinds. … The first kind comprises the philosophical sciences. They are the ones with
which man can become acquainted through the very nature of his ability to think … so that he is made aware of the
distinction between what is correct and what is wrong in them by his own speculation and research, …
81
82
83
84
85
86
The second kind comprises the traditional, conventional sciences. All of them depend upon information based on
the authority of the given religious law. There is no place for the intellect in them, … … they need to be related (to
the general principles) by some kind of analogical reasoning. … Thus, analogical reasoning of this type reverts to
being tradition itself, because it is derived from it. Ibid. p. 344
Ibid. p. 413
“The leader of the ‘Iraqis … [was] Abu Hanifah. The leader of the Hijazis was Malik b. Anas and, after him, ashShaf’i.”… Later on, Zahirites … restricted the sources of the law to the texts and the general consensus. They
considered obvious analogy and causality suggested by the texts as resting in the texts themselves. … The leaders
of this school were Dawud b. ‘Ali and his son and their followers. Ibid. pp. 345-46
Ibid. p. 413
Ibid. p. 348
“After that comes the study of the meaning of words.” Ibid. p. 347.
Ibid. p. 352
19
The essence of logic is abstraction:“Man is distinguished from the animals by his ability to
perceive universals, which are things abstracted from the sensibilia.”The object of logic is
the universal: “The mind then compared the individual objects that agree with each other,
with other objects that also agree with them in some respects. … In this way, abstraction
continues to progress. Eventually, it reaches the universal (concept), which admits no other
universal (concept) that would agree with it, and is, therefore, simple.”87
Ibn Khaldun credits Aristotle as one who “improved the methods of logic and systematized
its problems and details”: “He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical
discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore, he is called ‘the First Teacher.’
His work on logic is called ‘the Text’.”88 Al-Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes later wrote
commentaries on it.89Avicenna opposed Aristotle on most problems of Physics, whereas
Averroes did not.90
Ibn Khaldun warns the reader against becoming infatuated with logic, especially early in
one’s period of study: “One knows what harm it can do. Therefore, the student should
bewareof its pernicious aspects as much as he can. Whoever studies it should do so only
after he is saturated with the religious law and has studied the interpretation of the Qur’an
and jurisprudence.”91
Faith and Reason
Properly understood, argues Ibn Khaldun, logic must lead its student to affirm the oneness of
God, the creator of all. For logic leads to two conclusions. The first is to acknowledge that
complete knowledge is not possible for man: “God’s creation extends beyond the creation
of man. Complete knowledge does not exist in man. The world of existence is too vast for
him. … Thus, the intellect cannot comprehend God and his attributes. It is but one of the
atoms of the world of existence which results from God.” The second is to recognize the
limits of sense perception: “If this is clear, it is possible that the ascending sequence of causes
reaches the point where it transcends the realm of human perception and existence and thus
ceases to be perceivable.” Ibn Khaldun cites Ali, “the master of those who are truthful” as
follows: “The inability to perceive is perception.”92 And earlier still, Plato: “Plato said that
87
88
89
90
91
92
20
Ibid. p. 382
Ibid. p. 399
Ibid. pp. 382-85
Ibid. pp. 385-86
Ibid., p. 405
Ibid. pp. 350-51
no certainty can be achieved with regard to the Divine, and one can state about the Divine
only what is most suitable and proper – that is, conjectures.”93
The argument for the oneness of God is identical with recognition of limits of human
perception and thus the inability of abstract thought to comprehend the oneness of creation.
For Ibn Khaldun, there is no objective knowledge – for man at least. Put differently,
objective knowledge is the attribute of God.God is the power that stands above all creation,
and is testimony to the oneness of creation: “Now, the power combining everything without
any particularization is the divine power. … It appears that what the Sufis say about
oneness is actually similar to what the philosophers say about colors, namely, that their
existence is predicated upon light. When there is no light, no colors whatever exist. …
because particularization … exists only in perception. If there were no perceptions to create
distinctions, there would be no particularization, but just one single perception, namely the
‘I’ and nothing else. They consider this comparable to the condition of a sleeper.”94
To affirm the oneness of God and the unity of creation is to understand the limitations of every
human endeavor. For Ibn Khaldun, this included underlining the limits of Prophetic power:
“Muhammad was sent to teach the religious law. He was not sent to teach us medicine or
any other ordinary matter.” Thus, Ibn Khaldun insisted, Muhammad’s pronouncements on
matters other than religion must not be taken as having prophetic sanction. The example he
used was that of medicine: “The medicine mentioned in religious tradition is of the Bedouin
type. It is in no way part of the divine revelation. (Such medical matters) were merely part
of Arab custom and happened to be mentioned in connection with the circumstances of the
Prophet, like other things that were customary in his generation. They were not mentioned
in order to imply that religious law stipulated particular ways of practicing medicine. None
of the statements concerning medicine that occur in sound traditions should be considered as
(having the force of) law.”95
The distinction between the religious and the secular, and the relationship between the two,
was the subject of the fifth reflection that followed the reading of The Muqaddimah. For Ibn
Khaldun, faith and reason should lead us to two mutually reinforcing conclusions: the first
probing the limits of every religious authority, including that of prophetic powers, and the
93 Ibid. p. 402. The relationship between deductive reason and revealed texts (faith) was a key question for scholasticism
and its underlying philosophical system, neo-Platonism. The Gnostic reconciliation of reason and faith spanned
three centuries, from the Mutazilites (the Kalam) discourse of the 3rd Islamic century to Ibn-Rushd in the 6th century.
The Mutazilites reject formalized submission to ritual and opted for the Hellenistic solution: God operates by means
of laws of nature that he has established and does not bother himself with details; he is loathe to think of ‘miracles’.
He allows for a distance from the laws. The way is opened for figurative interpretation of sacred texts, a tendency
that culminated in the work of Ibn Rushd. Ibn-Rushd, who died in 1198, Maimonides, and Thomas Aquinas lived
around the same time, and read one another. Thomas Acquinas [1225-1274] read Ibn Rushd’s polemic against alGhazzali with passion and interest. His successors, Christian scholastics, reproduced the same arguments as between
the Mutazilites and the Asharites, as to whether human reason incapable of determining good and evil. Samir Amin,
Eurocentrism, pp. 42-45.
94 Ibid. p. 364
95 ibid. pp. 386-87
21
second acknowledging the limits of sense perception, questioning the possibility of objective
knowledge for humans.
For Ibn Khaldun, it is, above all, the Sufiswho affirmed the limits of sense perception and
laid stress on the need to rely on the spirit, and not the senses and abstract thought, to affirm
the oneness of God: “The Sufis … attempt to kill the bodily powers and perceptions through
exercise, and even the thinking power of the brain.”96 Over time, “the Sufis came to represent
asceticism”:“They developed a particular kind of perception which comes about through
ecstatic experience. … Very few people share the self-scrutiny of the Sufis, for negligence
in this respect is almost universal. Pious people who do not get that far perform, at best, acts
of obedience.”97
Sufism became a specialized branch of Islam with the development of settled life, the
increase in worldly aspirations and the development of the sciences. It also connected Islam
with the African and the South Asian worlds. This was in the 2nd [8th] century: “At that
time, the special name of Sufis was given to those who aspired to divine worship.”98Islam
developedtwo kinds of religious laws, that of jurists and muftis on the one hand and that
of Sufis on the other. Over time, the Sufi tradition drew from the African and the South
Asian practices and traditions. It is al-Ghazzali who dealt systematically with the laws of
asceticism and imitation of models. “The science of Sufism became a systematically treated
discipline in Islam. … Mystical exertion, retirement and spiritual exercises are as a rule
followed by the removal of the veil of sensual perception. … When the spirit turns from
external sense perception to inner perception, the senses weaken, and the spirit grows strong.
… It had been knowledge. Now, it becomes vision.”99
Civilization and Savagery
Civilization for Ibn Khaldun is identical with human social organization. It is urban, not
rural. Dynasty and royal authority are necessary for the building of towns, such as Baghdad
which he says had 65,000 public baths.100
Early Arabs were uncivilized: “A small or Bedouin civilization needs only the simple crafts.
… The Arabs, of all people, are least familiar with crafts. The reason for this is that the
Arabs are more firmly rooted in desert life and more remote from sedentary civilization.”
Ibid. p. 403
Ibid. pp. 358-59
ibid. pp. 358-59
“… the science of the religious law came to consist of two kinds. One is the special field of jurists and muftis.
… The other is the special field of Sufis. … Al-Ghazzali, in the Kitab al-Ihya, dealt systematically with the laws
governing asceticism and the imitation of models.” ibid., p. 360. The gist of Islamic and Christian metaphysics
is that there is no inherent contradiction between reason and faith. Samir Amin has argued that it is the limits of
deductive reason led to the influence of Indian asceticism, and thus of intuition as a third source of knowledge – thus
the emergence of Sufism. Budha from this point of view was a wise sage, not an inspired prophet. Samir Amin,
Eurocentrism, pp.
100 ibid. pp. 35, 263-64
96
97
98
99
22
The contrast with their neighbors in the Mediterranean could not be sharper: “The non-Arabs
in the East and the Christian nations along the shores of the Mediterranean are very well
versed in (crafts), because they are more deeply rooted in sedentary civilization and more
remote from the desert and the desert civilization.”101Arabs were relatively new to settled
life, unlike the Persians who “had had a period of thousands of years, ... The same was
the case with the Copts, the Nabataeans, and the Romans … and the Jews and others.” No
wonder “the buildings and constructions in Islam are comparatively few.”102
Savagery for Ibn Khaldun is not synonymous with pre-Islamicdarkness [Jahaliyya] and
civilization with Islamic Enlightenment. This is not a conventional Islamic history which
divides time into pre-Islamic and Islamic. The savage, the other, belongs to the desert and
the forest and to cold, wintery zones.103 He and she are defined by environment: “The nonArabs in the West, the Berbers, are like the Arabs in this respect, because for a very long time
they remained firmly rooted in desert life.”104The savage is the Negro, the Bedouin and the
Berber, and the Slav. What, besides climate, prevented development of civilization in the
forest and the desert but facilitated it in the city? As one student asked: Why does savagery
have no history? The final critical encounter with The Muqaddimahexplored its analytical
limits: unlike civilization, savagery had no history.
Arab response to civilization
The early Arab response to civilization was savage.Ibn Khaldun drew a contrast between
two conquests of Persia, the Greek and the Arab, as conquests by two powers at different
levels of civilization. Unlike the relatively more advanced Greeks who incorporated and
built on the scientific advances of the Persians, the relatively backward Arabs destroyed
these: “However, when the Muslims conquered Persia and came upon an indescribably large
number of books and scientific papers, Sa’ad b. Abi Waqqas wrote to ‘Umar b. al-Khattab,
asking him for permission to take them and distribute them as booty among the Muslims.
On that occasion, ‘Umar wrote him: Throw them into the water. If what they contain is right
guidance, God has given better guidance. If it is error, God has protected against it.’105 Thus
the Muslims threw them into the water or into the fire, and the sciences of the Persians were
lost and did not reach us.”106 Similarly, “Al-Ma’mun [?] tried to tear down the pyramids
but failed.”107 In a like manner, Roman emperors who had embraced Christianity showed
101 ibid. pp. 315, 317
102 ibid. pp. 271, 283
103 “The Arabs, of all people, are least familiar with crafts. The reason for this is that the Arabs are more firmly rooted in
desert life and more remote from sedentary civilization, the crafts, and the other things which sedentary civilization
calls for. The non-Arabs in the East and the Christian nations along the shores of the Mediterranean are very well
versed in (crafts), because they are more deeply rooted in sedentary civilization and more remote from the desert and
the desert civilization.” Ibid. p. 317
104 ibid. p. 317
105 This is a variant of the famous legend, according to which ‘Umar ordered the destruction of the celebrated library in
Alexandria.
106 Ibid. p. 372
107 Ibid. p. 266
23
apathy towards the Greek sciences: “When the Greek dynasty was destroyed and the Romans
emperors seized power and adopted Christianity, the intellectual sciences were shunned by
them, as religious groups and their laws require.”108
It is when Arabs developed a sedentary culture that, over time, they developed a civilized
response to external developments: “Eventually, … the Muslims developed a sedentary
culture, such as no other nation had ever possessed.” The same Muslims who had savagely
put paid to Persian culture in the infancy of their rule reached out to incorporate Greek
culture into their own civilization: “Abu Ja’far al-Mansur … sent to the Byzantine emperor
and asked him to send him translations of mathematical works. The Emperor sent him
Eucalid’s books and some works on physics. … Later on, al-Ma’mun came. He had some
(scientific knowledge). … He sent ambassadors to Byzantine emperors; they were to
discover the Greek sciences and have them copied in Arabic writing; he sent translators for
that purpose. As a result, a good deal of the material was preserved and collected.” On this
foundation prospered the great Muslim philosophers: “Abu Nasr al-Farabi and Abu ‘Ali Ibn
Sina (Avicenna) and the wazir Abu Bakr b. as-Sa’igh (Avempace) in Spain, were among the
greatest Muslim philosophers.”109
Non-Arab110 contribution to Islamic civilization
Muslims were illiterate at the time of Muhammad. Islamic scholarship began with
jurisprudence, a response to the need to define tradition (Sunnah) in a context where
religion was spreading and practice was taking a variety of forms. With the proliferation
of commentaries on the Qur’an and the Sunnah, there was great need to assessthe reliability
of transmitters. The more non-Arabs took to speaking Arabic, the greater was the need for
grammatical rules for the Arabic language lest it be corrupted.111
The scholars who responded to these needs were mainly non-Arabs: “It is a remarkable fact
that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars both in the religious and in the intellectual
sciences have been non-Arabs.” This is true even when a scholar is of Arab origin” for “he
is non-Arab in language and upbringing and has non-Arab teachers. This is so in spite of the
fact that Islam is an Arab religion and its founder was an Arab.” The reason, once again, was
the lack of civilization among the Arabs: “The reason for it is that at the beginning Islam had
108 ibid. pp. 372-73
109 ibid. p. 374
110 When Ibn Khaldun distinguished between Arabs and non-Arabs in Islam, the distinction was based on descent, not
culture: “‘non-Arab’ meant non-Arab by descent. … Being non-Arab in language is something quite different.”
Those Arab in language, he called “Arabicized non-Arabs.” Ibid. pp. 433, 439
111 “By the time of the reign of ar-Rahid, (oral) tradition had become far removed (from its starting point). It was thus
necessary to write commentaries on the Qur’an and to fix the traditions in writing, because it was feared that they
might be lost. It was also necessary to know the chain of transmitters and to assess their reliability, in order to be able
to distinguish sound chains of transmitters from inferior ones. Then, more and more law as concerning actual cases
were derived from the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Moreover, the Arabic language became corrupt, and it was necessary
to lay down grammatical rules.” Ibid. pp. 428-30
24
no sciences or crafts, because of the simple conditions and the desert attitude. … Illiteracy
was general at the time among the men around Muhammad, since they were Bedouins.”
The non-Arab scholars were mainly Persians. The reason was obvious to Ibn Khaldun:
“Now, the only sedentary people at that time were non-Arabs. … sedentary culture had
been firmly rooted among them from the time of the Persian Empire.Thus the founders of
grammar were Sibawayh and, after him, al-Farisi and az-Zajjaj. All of them were of nonArabic (Persian) descent. … Most of the hadith scholars who preserved traditions for the
Muslims also were Persians, or Persian in language and upbringing, because the discipline
was widely cultivated in the ‘Iraq and the regions beyond. Furthermore, all the scholars who
worked in the science of the principles of jurisprudence were Persians. … Only the Persians
engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus,
the truth of the following statement by the Prophet becomes apparent: ‘If scholarship hung
suspended in the highest parts of heaven, the Persians would attain it.’”112
Ibn Khaldun remarked of a growing division of labor between Arabs and non-Arabs with the
development of literacy. Whereas literate Arabs were preoccupied with power and rule, nonArab scholars developed scholarship, even if those in power viewed it with contempt.113If the
first sciences were directly connected with religion and jurisprudence, this was not case with
the intellectual sciences which were the next to be developed: “The intellectual sciences, as
well, made their appearance in Islam only after scholars and authors had become a distinct
group of people and all scholarship had become a craft.” The intellectual sciences, too,
“were then the special preserve of non-Arabs, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate
them.”114
Significance of Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun’s analysis is driven by a focus on change and dynamism. Differences between
civilizations are not explained on the basis of fixed characteristics – e.g., color – but on the
basis of dynamic changes. Whereas early Arabs retain much of the characteristics shaped by
nomadic life, these change with the establishment of civilization, i.e., sedentary life. This
is why the very state that in its infancy was responsible for the destruction of the Persian
heritage became central to salvaging the Greek heritage, particularly in mathematics, sciences
and philosophy, as it became a custodian of sedentary life and order.
112 ibid. pp. 428-30
113 “The Arabs who came into contact with that flourishing sedentary culture and exchanged their Bedouin attitude for
it, were diverted from occupying themselves with scholarship and study by their leading position in the ‘Abbasid
dynasty and tasks that confronted them in government. … In addition, at that time, they considered a lowly thing
to be a scholar. … The final result, however was that … Scholars were viewed with contempt , because the men in
power saw that scholars had no contact with them and were occupying themselves with things that were of no interest
to the men in power in governmental and political matters. This is why all scholars in the religious sciences, or most
of them, are non-Arabs.” Ibid. pp. 428-30
114 ibid. pp. 428-30
25
To read Ibn Khaldun is first of all to become acquainted with a different narrative of the
history of ideas. It is to go beyond contemporary nationalist debates that seek to identify a
single fountain of human civilization. It is also to question several assumptions prevalent in
modern scholarship.
The first is the nationalist dogma that naturalizes cotemporary geography – overlooking
its history – and identifies intellectual tradition with a fixed geography, as its necessary
attribute. From this point of view, Ibn Khaldun belongs to another tradition – for some Arab,
for others Berber – but not a third, African.The second is an assumption that intellectual
thought developsin a linear way. If Ibn Khaldun acknowledges the Greek foundation of Arab
philosophical thought, especially when it comes to logic, he at the same time lays great stress
on Persian foundations of Greek thought. This broadening of the historical landscape helped
the Kampala group cut through the sterile debate between Afrocentrists and Eurocentrists on
the place of ancient Egypt in the origin of civilization.
The reading of Ibn Khaldun also had a third effect for us. The focus on oral evidence and on
the development of rules and methods to check the accuracy of oral transmission raised a set
of questions. As I have noted, debates around how to assess the accuracy of oral tradition
are not new in African historiography. Ibn Khaldun’s account of the development of a
specialized class preoccupied with questions of tradition, its transmission and its adaptation,
raised a related question: had not such a class developed in African contexts like that of
Nyiginya kingdom in Rwanda and the kingdom of Buganda? Would not a comparative study
of sunna and custom under a single subject focused on the transmission and adaptation of
tradition, bring forth a valuable yield for all?
Afourth critical discussion focused on the description and explanation of ‘difference’ in
Ibn Khaldun. It led to an appreciation of the politics of translation, but also to obvious
connections between Ibn Khaldun’s description of forest Negroes and similar descriptions
in much of the racist literature of the period of the slave trade and formal colonization of
Africa.
A fifth effect of reading The Muqaddimahwas a reflection on how its author relativizes the
distinction between the religious and the secular. Ibn Khaldun not only probes the limits
of religious authority (in particular, that of Prophet Muhammad) but also the hard division
between reason and faith, equating faith in God with belief in objective knowledge.Finally,
to read Ibn Khaldun was to become aware of the limits of his own thought – alongside its
strength. If the latter lay in his understanding of civilization, the former lay in his failure to
historicize and probe savagery.What, besides climate, prevented development of civilization
in the forest and the desert and facilitated it in the city? As one student asked,115 why does
savagery have no history in Ibn Khaldun?
115 The comment came from Fred Guweddeko.
26
List of Working Papers
1.
Mahmood Mamdani, The South Sudan Referendum, March 2011
2.
Adam Branch, The Politics of Urban Displacement in Gulu Town, Uganda, March 2011
3.
Mahmood Mamdani, The Importance of Research in a University, April 2011
4.
Antonio Tomas, Preliminary Thoughts on the Legacy of Amilcar Cabral, August 2011
5.
Mahmood Mamdani, Okugenda Mu Maaso: The Link Between Tradition, Reform and
Development, November 2011
6.
Pamela Khanakwa, Inter-Communal Violence and Land Rights: Bugisu-Bugwere
Territorial Boundary Conflict, July 2012
7.
Adam Branch, The Violence of Peace in Northern Uganda, August 2012
8.
Okello Ogwang, Colonial Library, National Literature and the Post-Colonial Question:
Between Uganda Journal and Transition, August 2012
9.
Mahmood Mamdani, Graduate Education: Money Alone Will Not Solve the Problem,
August 2012
10.
Mahmood Mamdani, Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala, August 2012
11.
Suren Pillay, Critique and the Decolonizing Nation, January 2013
12.
Giuliano Martiniello, Accumulation by Dispossession: Agrarian Change and Resistance
in Uganda and Mali , January 2013
13.
Mahmood Mamdani, The Contemporary Ugandan Discourse on Customary Tenure:
Some Theoretical Considerations, January 2013
14.
Stella Nyanzi, Alienating Citizens: Exploring the Poetics and Polemics of Foreign Influence
over Homosexualities in Uganda, March 2013
15.
A Panel Discussion, Kenya Elections, March 2013
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10Reading Ibn Khaldun in Kampala

Transcription

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